I’m back with another Divi 5 progress update. First, if you want to test the latest version of Divi 5, including the recent updates I’ll highlight in this post, head to demo.elegantthemes.com and take it for a spin. We update the demo every two weeks and welcome your feedback. Keep reading to discover what’s new in the demo and what we accomplished over the past month.
Try The Divi 5 Demo
Get all the details in the video below. 👇
[embedded content]
What We Accomplished
We crossed a few important milestones over the past month, knocking off 4 features from the shrinking list of features we must complete before launching the Public Alpha.
Divi Presets
This month’s most significant accomplishment was wrapping up Divi Presets, a big and important milestone.
In Divi 5, presets work much faster, resulting in less CSS output. That’s because, in Divi 5, they are class-based, with a single preset class shared between modules. Not only does this result in a smaller page size on the front end, but it also means that updating modules that use presets in the Visual Builder is way faster since the app only needs to rerender the single style tag shared between all modules.
It’s a night and day difference, and once again, we are using Divi 5 as an opportunity to focus on performance.
Scroll Effects
Next, we finished implementing Scroll Effects, which was another complex feature and a nice hurdle to jump over. You can do a lot of fun stuff with Scroll Effects, so if you’re checking out the demo, give them a try.
Condition Options
We also finished implementing all remaining Condition Options, which allow you to hide and display modules based on various conditions, such as user role, logged-in status, date and time, and so on.
Responsive Views
Finally, we wrapped up Divi 5’s responsive view mode system, which includes a nice little change. Divi 5 allows you to zoom in and out while any responsive view mode is active. It’s a great way to get a bird’s eye view of your design, making it easier to drag items long distances.
In Divi 5, when your canvas is too small to hold your design within the current minimum viewport width, the canvas will automatically zoom out and scale your page to fit the available space instead of switching between view modes unwantedly. This means you can work on any breakpoint, even if your screen isn’t wide enough or your docked panels have reduced the canvas width.
Divi 5 Public Alpha Roadmap
With these features completed, let’s revisit the Divi 5 roadmap. The video above shows a bird’s eye view of the internal roadmap we use to track our progress. On the right is everything we have finished so far. In the middle, you can see what our team is working on during the current sprint, and on the left are the things we need to finish before the Public Alpha goes live.
This is where we stand currently.
Divi Dash Sneak Peak
Next, I have a little sneak peek to share. As I mentioned in previous updates, when we started down the long road of Divi 5 development, we knew we couldn’t keep building features for Divi 4. Every new Divi 4 feature would need to be recreated in Divi 5, resulting in a never-ending roadmap. So, we moved our entire Divi development team to Divi 5 and put a feature freeze on Divi 4. Specifically, we put a feature freeze on the builder, which is being recreated from the ground up.
However, going silent and not iterating for multiple years was unreasonable. We invested in our team, hired more developers, and set out to work on new projects that could help bridge the gap. Working on these small and alternative projects keeps the team nimble and provides the community with value while Divi 5 development continues.
One of those projects is nearly finished and is called Divi Dash.
Divi Dash is a WordPress site manager that helps you sprint through maintenance tasks. You can add all your websites to Divi Dash and easily log into them with a single click. You can manage updates across all your sites, create custom update schedules, manage themes and plugins, users, and more.
We will be adding many great features to Divi Dash, and it will be free for all Divi customers, included with your Divi membership. Stay tuned for that new service launching within the next month or two if all goes well. 🤞
Divi Quick Sites
Also, in case you missed it, we just launched a new feature called Divi Quick Sites, which empowers you to automatically generate and set up an entire Divi website in one to two minutes. You can make a website with AI or choose from a collection of hand-crafted starter sites.
Divi Quick Sites generates pages, creates custom layouts, writes content, generates images, and then sets up your entire site, including your menu, Theme Builder templates, Theme Customizer settings, and Divi Presets. It’s the fastest, easiest way to get a stunning WordPress website up and running in no time.
Get 47% For A Limited Time
Stay Tuned For More Updates
That’s all for this month’s progress report. Stay tuned for more updates, and don’t forget to follow us by email and subscribe to our YouTube channel to ensure you don’t miss a thing. Divi 5 is a vast project, but I’ll be back monthly to inform you of our progress. If you haven’t already done so, check out the Divi 5 demo and let us know your thoughts!
